The prevalence of portable electronic devices has increased in recent years. Also, the performance capabilities of portable electronic devices have increased in recent years. For example, more powerful processors, improved wireless radios, increased memory capacities, and other increases in performance have been realized in portable electronic devices. Accordingly, the number and variety of tasks that can be performed with portable electronic devices has also increased.
Additionally, portable electronic devices having different form factors have been proposed. For example, a number of tablet devices have been proposed that may present advantages over smaller handheld electronic devices (such as smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc.). For instance, tablets often make use of larger displays than handheld electronic devices. In this regard, tablets may present a larger display area that may facilitate added features (e.g., more robust graphical user interfaces may be developed for use with tablet devices). Additionally, because the overall size of tablet devices is often larger than handheld electronic devices, larger, more powerful batteries may be provided that have longer battery life than batteries of handheld electronic devices. As such, tablet devices may be able to operate for longer durations than handheld electronic devices.
However, tablets may also suffer from a number of drawbacks when compared to handheld electronic devices. For example, tablets, while potentially more convenient than many laptop or desktop computers, may not demonstrate the same convenience of handheld electronic devices. Additionally, in many cases, handheld electronic devices may be used as telephones or include wireless radios that enable communication with a cellular network (e.g., including both voice and data network capabilities). While some tablets include some form of wireless radio (e.g., 802.11, Bluetooth, etc.), many do not include wireless radios for communication with a cellular network. Those tablets that do include cellular radios often require an additional arrangement (e.g., an additional contract or a unique SIM card) with a service provider in order to utilize the cellular network with the tablet device and often can only use of the data capabilities of the cellular network.
Users often employ both tablet and handheld devices. For example, which device a user employs may depend upon the specific context of use. In this regard, a user may desire continuity of data across the devices employed. However, the ability to provide continuity of data across the multiple devices may be burdensome. For example, an individual may begin a task utilizing a handheld electronic device and wish to continue the task utilizing another device (e.g., a tablet device). However, the ability to transition performance of the task from the handheld electronic device to the tablet device may prove difficult. Some proposed solutions include, for example, cloud computing, server-based solutions, and other means of synching data across multiple devices. However, these proposed solutions often require costly subscriptions or complicated hardware setups to accomplish such services. Furthermore, the continuity of the task being performed may be interrupted (e.g., requiring the progress of the task to be saved and reopened on the other device) as opposed to “on the fly” changes of devices. As such, these solutions often present a large cost burden, may introduce security concerns regarding sensitive data, and may interrupt the continuity of tasks performed using the devices.
Additionally, as the computing and communication functions of handheld computing devices become more powerful, the user interface and display elements of such devices have evolved by attempting to adapt user interface regimes developed for personal computers for use with handheld computing devices. However, this attempt to adapt prior user interface regimes has been met with various hurdles.
A substantial number of handheld computing devices make use of a small touch screen display to deliver display information to the user and to receive inputs from the user. In this case, while the configurability of the device may be greatly increased and a wide variety of user interface options may be available to the user, this flexibility comes at a price. Namely, such arrangements require shared screen space between the display and the user interface. While this issue is shared with other types of touch screen display/user interface technology, the small form factor of handheld computing devices results in a tension between the displayed graphics and area provided for receiving inputs. For instance, the small display further constrains the display space, which may increase the difficulty of interpreting actions or results while a keypad or other user interface scheme is laid overtop or to the side of the applications in use such that the application is squeezed into an even smaller portion of the display. Thus a single display touch screen solution, which solves the problem of flexibility of the user interface may create an even more substantial set of problems of obfuscation of the display, visual clutter, and an overall conflict of action and attention between the user interface and the display.
In this regard, the popularity of tablets has continued to grow because tablets may offer solutions to the issue of limited screen space addressed above. However, the issues regarding the ability to synch data across devices remains a concern. One solution that has been proposed includes the docking of a master handheld device with a slave tablet device. Such an approach is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/251,768 filed Oct. 3, 2011 entitled “SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DOCKING PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICES”, the entirety of which is incorporated by reference herein.